


Six Drops

by Ruis



Category: Dialogues - Plato, Greek and Roman Mythology, Hymn to Demeter - Homer
Genre: Atlantis, F/M, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 13:16:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18851833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruis/pseuds/Ruis
Summary: „Come back“, she called with the voice of the ocean. „Come back to me!“ Her voice sounded wide over the sea and echoed from the cliffs. It flowed with the coastal waters of her home. Finally, unanswered, her voice broke with the waves on the shore.





	Six Drops

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertVixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/gifts).



It had been a lovely morning until she heard her daughter’s cry of distress. It was distorted by the howling winds, but no matter how faint it sounded in the distance, she would have known her daughter’s divine voice anywhere. Urgently she traveled back home, but even before she saw the island appearing as a pale line on the horizon, she knew she would arrive too late. „Come back“, she called with the voice of the ocean. „Come back to me!“ Her voice sounded wide over the sea and echoed from the cliffs. It flowed with the coastal waters of her home. Finally, unanswered, her voice broke with the waves on the shore.

She roamed the whole island and searched for her daughter near and far. The girl was not in the lovely meadow anymore, where she had been picking flowers with her friends, only a half-finished wreath of poppies left on the grass the sign she had ever been there. Neither was she in her home, the lovely white palace overlooking the shore. When asked, none on the whole island of Atlantis had seen the girl, and even the sun himself, who saw everything from his chariot of fire, claimed to not have shone on her. Although the powerful cry of the island’s princess had shaken the highest mountains and the deepest valleys alike, none beside herself would admit to having heard her voice. 

And so the Holy Mother of Fish wept and let her hair down in grief, for these obvious lies could mean one thing only. She dressed in the darkest cloak she could find to mark the day. She only stopped for a few minutes to rage at her divine father and husband, the old but ever powerful king without whose consent nothing could ever happen on the island. And then she rode down, the queen who traveled on the back of a dolphin, she with the labrys in her hand. She rode to find the dwelling place of the many-named lord who rules below the waves. 

For nine days she rode without food nor rest, and she led her mount down twisted paths into the deepest caves under the island. For nine days, the faithful dolphin carried her, back and forth, never doubting the pattern his rider imposed on him, even when it looked like they rode on the same current or passed the same underwater tunnel twice in a row. On this path that everyone will take one day, the starting point of the journey does not matter, yet the final destination would always be that true heart of Atlantis, whose mortal people belong to the sea and return inevitably one day. Being a goddess as well as a queen, she knew the pattern of the journey in her heart despite not being bound to a mortal lifespan, and whenever she was unsure of where to lead her mount, she consulted the pattern of almost invisibly thin lines engraved on her golden double axe. 

So when the tenth morning came, indicated by only the faintest traces of diffused light on silt particles in the muddy water, she reached that crossroad where all the rivers flow to sea, where worlds Above and Below finally collide, the crossroad and the goddess who dwells there. „Was that your daughter I heard earlier?“, the Lady Of All Estuaries asked her. „I believe I heard her voice shaking the very ocean floor with her fear as she was carried into the World Below“. Yet even this witness had not actually seen anything with her eyes and could not help her with the girl’s rescue. 

In her terrible anger, the Holy Mother of Fish went away without another word, disguised as an old woman with dishevelled hair and ripped cloak, visiting every coastal town and every harbor on the way. None of her people could recognize her, and wherever she went, the fish disappeared. Yearning for her daughter, she deprived the whole of Atlantis of the oean’s bounty that nourishes mortals, and the fisher boats came home with empty nets. Not a single fish could be caught if if not at the queen’s will, and the fishers only found empty waters wherever they went, roaming further and further out to sea, all their efforts in vain. Thus came about the harshest year since the very beginning of time when the island had risen first above the waves from the floor of the eternal sea.

In mourning for her daughter, the queen locked herself in the palace, unspeaking. Her grief knew no pity. She would have destroyed the whole mortal race with hunger, unmoved by prayers from mortals and gods alike. The king himself sent messengers one by one, offering precious gifts and the sea-scented mist of prayers. First, he sent the beautiful rainbow whose feet span the horizon on both sides. Then, he sent the salt-winged bird whose flight never stops on any shore and who was now landing for the very first time to speak to the queen. Finally, he spoke to the queen’s own dolphin and asked him to plead for the return of fish to the waters of Atlantis. And yet the Holy Mother of Fish, brooding in the royal palace, surrounded by the salty mists of her domain, would agree to none of their demands and pleas until her daughter was not brought back to her. 

Fearing for his people, the king now sent a messager to his brother, the one who dwells in the depths of the ocean. He sent the last fish he could find, one living in a fountain in his very chambers, who could not heed the queen’s command to hide in the depths of the sea. The fish swam down the watery labyrinth under the island, its message marked on the pattern of its scales by the king’s own hand. „Send her back“, the simple message read. „As the ruler of skies and seas, I command you to return the princess to her mother“.

He of the many unspoken names smiled at the young woman, his beloved wife and queen now, and bade her go up to her mother at the king’s command. „Hurry“, he told her. „The sooner you are reunited with your mother, the sooner can you return to the realm whose queen you are now.“ He did not grieve, for it had not gone unnoticed by him that as soon as she had heard of her mothers implacable wrath, she had, secretly, or so she thought, returned to the deepest wellspring in the deepest cave he had shown her the night of their wedding, and drunk six drops of that holy water. He had known then that wherever she would go in the meantime, she would always willingly return to their shared kingdom under the island. 

The young queen swam up, towards the surface in a straight path, approaching the light without once having to follow the convoluted lines of that all-pervasive placeless labyrinth, for she was no longer of the living world now. When she rose up above the waves, all the fish of the ocean followed her, and her mother, wo was after all the Holy Mother of Fish as well, in her joy did not think to send them away again until her time came to return to the depths. Fom this day on, the fish would follow the young queen, appearing and withdrawing in glittering swarms on the days she crossed the boundary between worlds.

**Author's Note:**

> When I saw your prompt about a story from Atlantis "inspiring" a Greek myth, I knew I absolutely had to write this! I'm sure you recognize the beginning of Homer's Hymn to Demeter, although in the ocean-centered society of Atlantis, of course some parts of the story would go differently, and in my headcanon, the moralistic middle part of the Greek myth is totally a later addition by another culture. So, I really hope you enjoy this!


End file.
